Ryan Pangilinan

Alumni Profile: Colt Cabana of the Art of Wrestling Podcast

Colt Cabana (nee Scott Goldman) is easily one of the most recognizable independent wrestlers at the moment. He’s the creator and host behind The Art of Wrestling, often considered the first wrestling podcast. While Cabana is known to some as “breaking the internet,” he should be known more for his DIY business acumen, which has extended to a fruitful life as an independent wrestler, comic, and world traveler. Cabana is a multi-title holder, guested on both Marc Maron’s WTF podcast and his eponymous TV show, but more importantly, he’s provided the template on how to be a completely self-sufficient DIY pro who hosts a podcast from his studio...APARTMENT. Give us your life story in a few sentences: who are you, what is/was your involvement in DIY culture and what is your "real job"? Chubby Jewish sports-minded kid from the suburbs of Chicago dreams of being a pro wrestler. So he…

Lesson 8: How Mixtapes Taught Me Content Marketing

Before I started playing in terrible pop-punk bands, I was very much a fixture of the Seattle Hip-Hop scene. I was fortunate to have grown up in a time when skateboarding videos featured both rappers and hardcore bands (usually of the Christian music variety, but I digress), so both genres were allowed to coexist, even if only a small handful of my friends understood this appreciation. Since I was 13, I wanted to be a DJ and when I entered high school, after inheriting two very crappy Sony turntables and a Realistic brand mixer, I was making mixtapes and selling them to fellow students. Little did I know that selling homemade tapes, with songs by other people, would help me in developing key skills for content marketing and strategy. How? Understanding your audience It was 1996 and I packed my mixtapes full of popular rap songs from 2Pac and tha…

Alumni Profile: Justin Brannan of Indecision and Most Precious Blood

Whether it’s Jello Biafra running for mayor of San Francisco or anarchist zines that support systematic change, punk rock and politics inherently go hand-in-hand. Known for shredding in Most Precious Blood and Indecision, Justin Brannan went from playing sick breakdowns to becoming one of the most respected young Democrats in the New York area. His change in job title is something I can relate to; following the breakup of my last hardcore band, I worked as a communication specialist for the Washington State House Democrats. Instead of being an idle armchair punk with strong opinions to share on the B9 Board, I was helping facilitate change on the homefront – even if that meant setting aside my own cynicism. Brannan is still very much an involved activist and works with the New York City Department of Education. A member of the PRMBA Alumni, Brannan gives us the low down on…

LESSON 3: The Art of Getting Up

When I was 12, I had my first foray into graffiti, which largely included me sloppily writing my name with a Mean Streak marker in McDonald’s bathrooms and bus benches. Overtime, some of my other terrible graffiti friends showed me that you can also “get up” (getting your name up everywhere) by using postal labels from the USPS and “My Name is” badges from any random office and sticking them on as many visible surfaces as possible. Years later, when I began playing in bands, I found this practice to be useful when we would order much better-looking stickers and put them all over whichever neighborhood we were playing in. Yes, this is vandalism, but it did make our band visible which, in turn, put us on several good shows for our two-year run. For my current social marketing consultation company, I took a very similar approach, minus the outright…